Prime Time Preliminary Sunday Ratings

NBC's "Sunday Night Football's" featured matchup between the Denver Broncos and San Diego Chargers performed strongly enough to give the network a win Sunday even though ratings were down significantly from last week, according to preliminary Nielsen Media Research numbers. "SNF" posted a 4.4/12 in the Fast National numbers, down 21% from last week's Fast Nationals for the game between the Carolina Panthers and the New York Giants, which did a 5.6/14 before rising to 6.8/18 in the final numbers. An NFL lead-in helped Fox and CBS come in second and third, respectively, though programming on those networks was edged out by football throughout the night. ABC's presentation of "The Sound of Music" took up its entire prime-time block, doing a 1.6/4 for a fourth-place finish. The CW finished the night fifth.

	7	7:30	8	8:30	9	9:30	10	10:30
1.6 / 4	Movie: The Sound of Music 1.6 / 4 6.3 mil
2.5 / 7	NFL Overrun 5.3 / 15 18.6 mil	60 Minutes 2.7 / 8 13.5 mil		Million Dollar Password 2.0 / 6 9.9 mil		Cold Case 2.0 / 5 9.1 mil		The Unit 1.4 / 4 6 mil
2.6 / 7	NFL Overrun 3.6 / 10 9.7 mil	The OT 2.6 / 8 6.7 mil	The Simpsons 2.4 / 7 5.5 mil	King of the Hill 1.9 / 5 4.4 mil	Family Guy 2.7 / 7 5.6 mil	American Dad 2.2 / 6 4.7 mil	No Programming
4.0 / 11	Football Night in America 2.3 / 7 7.1 mil	Football Night in America 3.1 / 9 8.6 mil	NFL Football: Broncos vs. Chargers 4.4 / 12 11.9 mil
0.3 / 1	Jericho 0.3 / 1 0.9 mil		Movie: Revenge of the Pink Panther 0.3 / 1 1.4 mil				No Programming

Source: Nielsen Media Research

*Ratings are specified in the 18-to 49-year-old demographic and viewership in P2+.

A note about ratings: Ratings are expressed as percentages of Nielsen's estimated 114.5 million U.S. television households. The first number, the rating, is a percentage of households tuned into a specific program at a specific time.

The second number, the share, is a percentage of households with televisions in use tuned into that same program. For example, if a show obtains a 10.2/16, this means that 10.2% of all U.S. households tuned into the program at some point during the broadcast. Meanwhile, 16% of all households watching television during the time period viewed the program at some point. Ratings are broken down further by demographic, as networks sell advertising time based on the makeup of the audience.